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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: January 31, 2006 |
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A bomb exploded Monday inside a Turkish-American friendship association in the southern city of Adana, wounding five Turks, the city's governor said.
Police launched an operation to apprehend a man who was believed to have placed the bomb at the entrance hall and was seen running from the scene, Gov. Cahit Kirac said. An unidentified person entered the building just before the blast and left in a hurry, Kirac said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Turkish Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida have acknowledged planning attacks on U.S. targets in Turkey. Leftist and Kurdish militants are also active in the country.
Turkey, NATO's sole Muslim member, is a key U.S. ally.
None of the injured were in serious condition, the police said in Adana, some 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of the capital, Ankara.
The wounded included four students who were taking English language courses at the association and a janitor, Kirac said.
"The injured have no life threatening wounds," Kirac said.
"There is lots of smoke here, I have to get out," an official who answered the telephone inside the association said before hanging up.
The blast caused a fire, which was extinguished by firefighters. It also shattered windows of the four-story building, reports said.
Selahattin Genc, who was teaching a class of 15 at the time of the explosion, told the Anatolia news agency that the bomb went off close to the entrance of a classroom that was being refurbished and was not in use.
"It was lucky that classes were interrupted because of the refurbishment," he said.
Student Nazif Uler, who was slightly injured, told Anatolia: "The janitor was lying on the ground with blood running from his foot. ... A fire broke out after the explosion."
Police launched an investigation to determine the type of bomb, Kirac said. After the blast, police evacuated the building and cordoned off the area and anti-terror police searched the building to make sure that there were no other bombs.
Al-Qaida linked Turkish militants, who killed some 60 people in a series of suicide bombings against two synagogues, the British Consulate and a British bank in Istanbul in November 2003, have said that they were initially planning to stage an attack against the Incirlik base, on the outskirts of Adana city, or the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul. But they had to change their targets because of strict security.
In June 2003, a Turkish man hurled two hand grenades into the garden of a U.S. Consulate in Adana. The man pleaded guilty and said he had been protesting Israel's attacks on Palestinians. However, he denied any connection with militant groups and added that he had been using hashish the day of the attack.
The consulate mainly deals with U.S. military personnel serving at the Incirlik Air Base. Many of those troops left during the Iraq war, after the U.S. Air Force ended its patrols from Incirlik over northern Iraq.
Incirlik is now used by the United States to fly large civilian cargo flights to the base and redistribute the cargo to military aircraft bound for Afghanistan and Iraq. The base also hosts 10 U.S. refueling aircraft used to support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. |
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